Disciple of Vengeance by CC Rasmussen (phonics readers .txt) 📕

busy warehouses and stockyards. Sciana’s dark omen echoed in the back of his mind. He thought of Eli and his family. All the people he’d let down. The uniform streets of Vrear brought back strange memories. He’d always hated his family. The abdication to duty they enforced. The selfish goals they sought after. And yet, he felt pain at their loss. They hadn’t been good people, perhaps, but they’d been his people, and at least they’d sought prosperity for the Confederacy. If not for Orinax, they’d still be alive. Janis was no closer to understanding why Orinax had betrayed them, or the force working behind it all. Hopefully, someone in Vrear would know where they were. He was ready to start his search until he saw the inn.

It was eight stories tall, the upper levels rising above the central tavern and lit by a haphazard series of lanterns all wired up in a way that was eerily reminiscent of the Society’s compound. When they entered, he approached the clerk past the tables of gamblers. Exhaustion overcame him with each step. Janis barely tracked their conversation. The clerk gave him a key and a room designation. Ruck noted it. Janis took the key.

Ruck stayed quiet until they got inside. It was an alien space with curves and smooth walls. Little more than a storage closet in J’Soon. Janis collapsed on the bed.

“I thought we were going to go look for your sister,” Ruck said.

“We will,” Janis managed.

“I’m going to go look around.” Janis grunted. “Alright, I’m leaving.”

“Fine. Now shut up. I need to sleep.”

Ruck snorted. He imagined it as the Zata, its nostrils expelling mist as it guided him through a land of corpses. They littered the ground below, and looking up, he saw them disappear into the horizon. Legions of corpses intersected by creeks of burbling blood. The sky was struck purple with nebulae and the aspects of god-beings.

“There is a price to all power,” the Zata said. “You will pay it eventually if you don’t abandon it.”

“You’re wise, for a horse,” Janis replied. He swayed from side to side on the powerful creature’s back and tried not to pay attention to the stench. The Zata laughed.

“Only because you’re a sapien.”

“I know what I’m about, creature.”

“So all sorcerer’s say.”

“Where are we?” Janis realized right after thinking it was the land of the dead. “There is no land of the dead. It is a myth.”

“There are regions beyond the Branches of the World Tree. Some exist only in the soul.” The Zata looked back at him, its black eye squinting as it regarded him.

Janis looked up again at the sky and saw a hole there. A dark spot into whose gaping maw stars and nebulae swirled. An ominous plate serving itself a healthy portion of what hung above.

“Few sapiens get the chance to peer into it so brazenly.”

“I’m not just any sapien.” The creature snorted again. “That’s the creature I made my pact with?”

“Yes,” the Zata said. “Though what it is, I cannot say.”

“And it doesn’t matter, because it’s serving its purpose.”

“When that disk becomes the entirety of your sky, you will cease to be Janis Aphora,” the Zata said. Janis could hear a female voice along the gruff edges, something soft and recognizable.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Despite all that has happened and will happen,” the Zata continued, its voice becoming more feminine as it did so, “I care for you.”

“Re?”

The Zata didn’t look back at him. “Did you ever stop to think that you’re doing what it wants? That you’re not consuming others, but your own soul? You must expel this thing while you can and turn away. Fight the Arawat, take your vengeance, but leave me behind. For your own sake, as your sister, please.”

“You’re scared,” Janis replied. He looked down at the bodies again, but recognized some of them and forced himself to look away. “You think Orinax is so strong, but we can defeat him together. We can face anything.”

“I’m trying to help you,” she said.

The anger sizzled inside him. “Then fight him.”

“You sound just like what we used to hate.”

“Where are you, Re?”

“We used to laugh at Aron and Gar’Sha for their ambition. Now you’ve sacrificed everything for power just like them, and you don’t even understand how to use it. I took the cowl so that you wouldn’t have to, and you’ve betrayed that sacrifice.”

The accusation stung. Even though he couldn’t remember it well, some part of him knew she spoke true. “Why are you trying to protect him?” The silence hurt more than her barbs.

“Your idea of duty is so narrow, and your power so unearned. You don’t understand what’s at stake, and I won’t be able to protect you.”

“Tell me. Let me help.”

She sighed. “I don’t want your help. I want you to be free.”

“I survived to save you, and neither spiteful god-beings nor ambitious families or deranged cultists are going to stand in my way.”

He realized he was shouting. Renea sighed sadly through the creature’s nostrils. “You live in a dreamworld, Janis. And for all its unreality, it is still so small, and will cost you so much.”

His body swayed too strongly. He fell off of the Zata’s back, plunging into the soft mushy bodies below, sinking into them just like he had outside of J’Soon in the crater. Their insides smothered him until all there was only the rage, and a deeper memory… a book in a room he wasn’t supposed to enter…a book he was never supposed to read…

He came to in the small apartment and saw the silhouette of a man standing at the end of the bed, watching him. In a flash, he’d unsheathed his dagger and lunged for him. The silhouette grabbed his arm and pulled him to his left, disorienting him and blocking him from retaliating with his left arm. Janis let his momentum carry him into the man’s bulk. They sparred for a second as Janis pulled up a second, smaller dagger attached to his thigh. The man grabbed it, holding both of his arms as they strained to kill him. “So you’re not entirely soft,” a gruff voice said.

“Brethor?”

The old man pushed him away. Janis held his daggers low. Brethor stepped into a bar of moonlight from the window to his right. The Visitor’s Quarter sparkled with artificial lights, like the night sky reflected on a still but cluttered pond. His bearded face was as Janis remembered it. Same deep wrinkles in the forehead, rough skin and cold blue eyes. The only difference was his hair was grayer. “So you remember your master, if only when he’s staring you in the face.” His hands remained at his hips.

“Memory is not such a simple thing, now.”

“You were to wait for me in B’lac.”

Janis sheathed his daggers. “There wasn’t time.”

Brethor’s eyes narrowed. He nodded once. “So I heard on arriving. The Arawat are terrified you’ll rally an army and return.”

“It was a mage in service to Orinax that attacked me.”

He looked out the window. “Yes, but the wizard has leveraged the god-being’s service through the promise of Arawat slaves. They’re united in their desire to killing you, it seems.” He looked at Janis. “You’re lucky you got away like you did.”

“You got here quickly.”

“Not by the standards of the Or’Sa Channel. It took me a day to get into Vrear undetected. The Arawat have placed quite the bounty on both of us.”

“How did you know I’d come here?”

“Because I know something of what Orinax wants.” He faced Janis. “Where did you go, what did you learn? Did Eli find you? What was your journey here like? Out with it, boy. We need to move quickly.” Janis glared at him, the dying words of the sputtering mercenary lingering in his mind. And he’d so badly wanted to forget the man. “Someone close,” he’d said.

“Why? You were just a mercenary. What do you care about my family’s fate?”

Brethor studied him. He sighed. “What’s happened has effected your memory worse than you know. For that I’m truly sorry.” He approached. Janis struggled to keep his hands off of his daggers. Brethor gripped his shoulder. “You are like a son to me. Do you understand? Search your mind. Remember.”

Janis tried. He recalled training with Brethor and other children… the face of his first kill, following Brethor into a local bandit’s camp… Orinax watching him display his skills for his father…

Janis swallowed and nodded. Brethor nodded to him. “No one wants to learn of Orinax’s plan more than me, and the Arawat want me dead almost as much as you. Shadowmaster or not, they view me as an Aphora retainer.” He scoffed, but continued looking into Janis’s eyes. Janis nodded again. Brethor pat him on the shoulder. “Ok.” He stepped back. “Now tell me.”

As Janis opened his mouth, the door flew open and Ruck ran inside. Brethor’s dagger was only inches from the boy’s eye when Janis caught his elbow. “He’s with me,” Janis said.

“Janis,” Ruck cried out.

Brethor nudged Janis back. His body relaxed as he sheathed the dagger under his black tunic. “We don’t have the means to hire servants.”

“I’m not a servant,” Ruck said. “I’m part of his team. Right, Janis?”

Brethor glanced at Janis. “We need to talk,” Janis replied. “Stay up here and keep watch.”

“But-”

“I’m serious. Stay here. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Brethor walked past the boy without a second look. Ruck stopped Janis as he followed. “I don’t trust him.”

Janis looked up at Brethor waiting outside the door. “Wait until we leave, then go to the Zata. Get it ready for us.” Ruck nodded. “If anything happens-”

“I’ll have it ready.”

Janis nodded, then followed Brethor out.

The third floor bar had a tall ceiling and an open floor plan, much like the largest drinking halls in J’Soon. A long window hugged the wall by the bar. A few towers lingered in the distant fog, their lights bleary past the rain pelting the inch-thick glass. Janis had never seen fog as thick or rain as heavy. Looking out the window as they walked along the bar, past the mercenaries and pilgrims that hugged drinks, Janis marveled at how alien Vrear was. Both its weather and history. J’Soon followed the ancient ways. It was a confederacy that traced itself back to the old barons of the Setian Suzerainty that had ruled in that era, and when Trajan Set fell, they had united to carve out their own little realm from the shattered empire. Vrear was alien. They kept their dealings with the rest of Saurius to a minimum. Even this Visitor’s Quadrant was bizarre.

They took a seat at the end of the bar. It was crowded and loud, but Brethor seemed to relax after seeing that the exits were within sight. He ordered them two drinks in an accent Janis didn’t recognize, then waited until the bartender dropped them off and left. He held up his drink. “To survival,” he said. They clinked glasses. Janis took a sip. “Now, explain yourself.”

Janis shared what had happened, carefully leaving out his pact with the symbiote, the presence he’d felt behind Orinax, and his dreams with Renea. Brethor drank intermittently as he listened, his eyes steady as he took in the information. When Janis finished, he splayed his hand on the counter around his glass and nodded. “She was one of Eli’s daughters,” he said.

Janis felt his heart sink towards his chest. It made him think of the symbiote pulsating there, just under his robes. “She died honorably. You said you have knowledge about Orinax.”

Brethor flicked his